Being a true expert and the winner of the forecast competition for the Gomoku AT 2017 (link), I will now authoritatively explain everyone the balance of power in the upcoming Gomoku QT.

The players who will almost certainly qualify are the beetle and the musician. My only advice to the beetle is to not burn the midnight oil during the tournament, and my only advice to the musician is to not delve into fantasies during games. Discipline is important.

Then there are five players whose chances are pretty good, say above 50%. These players are the lord from Poland, the loller, the peroxide, the fluffy hare, and the carassius. The lord has always been simply strong. If he hadn't been, the godfather wouldn't have invited him to join the clan of lords. The loller is quite a good calculator, albeit prone to psychological disturbances. The peroxide is on fire nowadays and shined at the last fish party and in Pardubice. The fluffy is quite experienced and will likely leave many players behind. And the carassius is likely to sneak to the AT because he is тот ещё карась.

Then there are three players whose chances seem to be below 50% but still considerable: the EL boss, the kohlrabi, and the click of stones. The boss is a good fighter, but is lazy to prepare, like a lazy whale. He'll just come and fight, with the goal being just to play dôstojne. The kohlrabi is simply overripe. Likewise, the click of stones nowadays isn't as strong as before.

Then there are a couple of players whose chances are pretty slim but at least existent: the bone and the cyclist. The bone doesn't yet seem to be solid enough, and the cyclist almost always runs in the middle of the peloton.

Everyone else has practically no chance, although I cannot entirely exclude a surprise from the midnight point hunter. And the goat lover from the Ural mountains may surprise favorites by his gomoku goats.

I am Australian, but was raised in Russia and know a unique Russian way to sincerely wish good luck: "Ни пуха, ни пера!" It literally means, "No fluff and no feather for you!" Fluff denotes animals, feather denotes birds, and the whole phrase originally meant, "May your hunt on animals and birds be unsuccessful," and was originally used as a superstitious ritual to make the hunt, on the contrary, successful.

Many Russians are afraid that directly wishing someone good luck or praising someone before an upcoming important event such as a hunt, an exam, or a tournament can actually bring him bad luck. This stems from ancient Russian beliefs about evil spirits, but can also be supported by psychological considerations. If you wish someone good luck and are too nice towards him, he is likely to relax and lose his fighting spirit. If you, on the contrary, wish him bad luck, he is likely to become a bit angry, more focused, and more willing to succeed. If you praise someone, he may well overestimate his abilities and fail. If you instead criticize him, he will get reminded about his deficiencies, consider the upcoming event as a big challenge, and do his best and utmost to prove that he is able.

Motivated by the above considerations, I decided to write an article about weaknesses of the participants of the Gomuku Qualification Tournament (GQT). The article is strictly about weaknesses, so praises and mentions of strengths are deliberately avoided.

And I have no hesitation as to who to start with: Martin Muzika, who deprived his national team of the silver in the last world team championship by making a terrible blunder in the decisive round. Here is the link to the game: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14653. His opponent was about 300 rating points below him, and Martin dominated during the entire game. At a certain point he needlessly played fours like a newbie and thereby gave the opponent an opportunity to play a tight but simple winning combination. The opponent found it and played it. As a result of Martin's blunder, the Czech team got no medal at all, with the silver and bronze medal winners earning the same number of points as the Czechs and beating them on the tie-breaking criterion. Following this, Valery Kondratyev made the following public comment on the Russian gomoku discussion forum (as translated by me from Russian): "Crazy Muzika. He plays a different game, which has something in common with gomoku."

Martin's game against Edvard Rizvanov in the last world team championship deserves special attention (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14630). Edvard put a scheme, and Martin chose black and made a losing fifth. Edvard responded by a losing sixth, and then Martin chose a losing seventh. This marvelous taarof-style series of mistakes was completed by Edvard, who played a losing eighth and lost the game. The game was highly important as it was played in the match between Czechia A and Russia A.

What Martin lacks is obviously self-discipline. Gomoku is a cruel game, in which a slight inaccuracy can turn the tables. Real gomoku warriors are highly accurate and check everything.

Since I mentioned Edvard Rizvanov, it is now his turn to be criticized. It is unthinkable how a player can put a scheme he has not properly learned, especially in a highly important game. This is unprofessional. Also, I was told by one of the best Russian players that Edvard has two major flaws: (i) a lack of understanding of what to do in zero positions and (ii) a fragile personality with psychological issues. It is perhaps the latter factor that makes him a pretty unstable player. For instance, he earned 8 out of 9 points in the Russian Final 2017 and 9 out of 9 points in the Moscow Open 2019, but only 4.5 out of 10 points in the Krasnodar Open 2017 and only 2.5 out of 7 points in the Russian Final 2019.

Michał Żukowski seems to lack a professional approach either. During the last world team championship he posted a message on the Russian gomoku discussion forum at 1:27am Polish time, almost one-and-a-half hours after midnight, despite having to play next day. On the day following that night, Michał was unable to beat an opponent who was 300+ rating points below him. Burning the midnight oil during a tournament is unprofessional. A good night's sleep is essential. Another example is Michał's game against Denis Osipov in the same championship (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14612). Denis put a new scheme, and Michał elected not to add stones and chose a color. In the modern era of powerful gomoku software, such a top player as Denis could not come up with a scheme solvable in the human mind. Previous attempts by various players to play an unknown scheme put against them ended as a disaster (e.g., Dupszki vs Smirnov in 2015, Tarannikov vs Kozhin in 2015, Tarannikov vs Tóth in 2017). Needless to say, Denis confidently beat Michał, not even entering the middlegame. The decision not to add two stones was simply unprofessional.

Pavel Laube's golden days seem to be over, with his rating having gradually slidden down from 1931 to 1722. In his golden days he won the silver of the world championship, finishing behind only legendary Attila Demján. Years passed, and in 2017 Pavel barely qualified to play in the AT, only to finish there 10th out of 12 players. He seems to be losing his passion, care, and interest and to play rather by inertia, not willing to invest time and effort in order to progress. As his nickname, Kedlub, is the masculinized Czech word for kohlrabi, I can say that the kohlrabi is overripe.

The same thing can be said about Mikhail Kozhin. Having two bronze medals of the world championship in his trophy cabinet, he started frequently making awful mistakes in his games and let his rating sink below 1700. Following a series of inexplicable blunders in the Russian Final 2017, he even made public posts saying he might have a medical condition affecting cognition. Later he clarified that hours of intensive thinking result in his brain being deprived of oxygen to an extent.

Luká Souček is somewhat similar to Martin Muzika in terms of impulsiveness. Spoiling a nice game with an impulsive ill-thought move is their way. A good illustration is Luká' game against his Polish namesake, Łukasz Majksner: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14547.

Igor Eged is lazy to prepare. An excellent illustration is his game against Ko-Han Chen in the final part of the world team championship 2016 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/197/12163). Igor put a scheme that is an easy white win, and his Taiwanese opponent chose the wrong color. Not knowing how to win in his own scheme, Igor made a wrong sixth and thereby equalized the position. Soon he messed up again and resigned already after move 25.

Another participant who seems to be lazy to prepare is Michał Zajk, as he almost never puts schemes or central openings. By not forcing his opponents to add two stones, Michał misses a chance to quickly get a time advantage or a better position, as choosing a playable addition of two stones is often a difficult and time-consuming task.

Also, it is questionable whether Michał is psychologically strong, as he tends to lose decisive games. For instance, he lost to těpán Tesařík in the final round of the last world team championship despite that těpán was about 150 rating points below him. If Michał had won that game, his national team would have received the silver instead of the bronze. Furthermore, Michał lost the final round of the Polish championship 2016 to Piotr Małowiejski, who was about 400(!) ratings points below Michał. The loss resulted in Michał landing on the 4th place instead of winning the gold.

Matīss Riherts has a bunch of weaknesses. First, he lacks experience of live games, especially of those with a long time control. He played only in four live tournaments, and the time control exceeded half an hour only in one of them, where it was 40 min + 15 sec. Being not used to playing on a real board, Matīss told me he had found it difficult to beat opponents whom he would easily beat on Kurnik. Second, Matīss is a hardcore night owl who is used to regularly burn the midnight oil on Kurnik and go to bed hours after midnight, so he is likely to find it difficult to do his best and utmost in the early hours of morning rounds. Third, Matīss' habit to undo his moves on Kurnik cannot serve him well in live tournaments. His current live rating, 1460, seems to reflect the above issues.

Adrian Fitzermann did not play in any official tournaments in the last three years, and his lack of practice may prove to be detrimental. Furthermore, in his last live tournament whose time control exceeded half an hour he managed to earn only the sixth place. And it was just the Polish championship.

Maksim Karasev is a renju player who rarely plays gomoku. His renju habits of assessing positions as well as his lack of experience of adding two stones and playing positionally near an edge may well bring him down in decisive games against strong opponents.

těpán Tesařík has long been in the crowd of people who are below 1700 and is yet to prove that his recent rating rise is not just a lucky fluctuation.

I did not mention some other participants, but they can just look at their past results or the absence thereof and easily find reasons to criticize themselves.

And if you think you are strong, remember that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The board and stones are waiting for you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I announce the forecast competition for the Gomoku A-Tournament (GAT) 2019 and cordially invite you to participate in it.

The prize is a nice wooden 15x15 board with stones in addition to being declared the best expert.

The forecast competition is open to everyone in the world, including the GAT players themselves. The only eligibility criterion is that I have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that you are not a virtual clone of another participant of this forecast competition. A convincing FB or VK account with many friends or being a known live or online gomoku player will generally suffice.

Many thanks to the sponsor of this forecast competition, Ilya Katsev, who generously offered the prize. Ilya is a true gomoku fan.

The deadline for submitting your forecast is the actual start of the GAT, which is scheduled to start tomorrow, on Sun 4 Aug, at 9:30 Tallinn time, which is 8:30 Warsaw time and 9:30 Moscow time.

Your forecast must specify how many points each of the GAT participants you think will earn. The GAT participants are:

For those who do not know, the GAT is a round-robin tournament in which everyone plays one game with everyone.

The predicted number of points for each GAT participant must be an integer number or an integer number with a half-point, but you are not required to ensure that your forecast mathematically can come true as a whole.

A useful hint to make a good forecast: The GAT participants will earn 66 points in total. However, as stated above, you are not required to make the sum of points in your forecast equal to 66.

In this forecast competition, the deciding parameter is the sum of the deviations. The deviation for a given GAT participant in your forecast is simply the absolute value of the difference between the predicted and actual number of his points.

For example, if you correctly guess the number of points for 10 GAT participants, overestimate the result of one of the two remaining GAT participants by one point, and underestimate the result of the other remaining GAT participant by one point, then the sum of the deviations is 2.

You can submit only one forecast, but can update it before the deadline by submitting a new forecast as many times as you wish.

The tie-breaking criterion is the date and time of the final version - the earlier the better.

To submit your forecast, do the following:

1. Prepare a file with your forecast in any common format (e.g., TXT, DOC, PDF, or Excel). If you use the TXT format, use the Latin letters to write the players' names, not Russian letters.

(c) In "Message," write your full name or the pseudonym under which you are known in the gomoku community and add any random word. If you have never communicated with me, also add your contact details in the same field.

(d) Click on "More."

(e) Make sure that the option "7 days" is selected (which is the default option).

(f) Empty the field "Expire after # downloads."

(g) Tick "Protect download with a password."

(h) Write any password there (different from the random word you added on Step 3c). Please also save the password somewhere on your computer.

(i) Change "Send in one email" to "Do not send."

(j) Tick "I agree with the terms of service."

(k) Click on "Upload now."

(l) Wait until you see the message "Successfully uploaded."

4. I will soon send you a confirmation containing the random word you chose on Step 3c. In the very unlikely event that you do not receive such a confirmation within a reasonable period of time (say a couple of hours during the daytime), contact me.

5. After(!) the deadline, send me the password as soon as you can. This can be done via FB, VK, or email. My Facebook account is fb.com/profile.php?id=100011333320097 ; my VK account is vk.com/id372140299

This procedure is needed to ensure that I will not see your forecast before the deadline. I myself will participate in the forecast competition, and seeing forecasts by others might give me some advantage.

Additionally or alternatively to using zeta-uploader, you can directly send your forecast to Łukasz Majksner. He will not participate in the forecast competition and will not tell your forecast anyone before the deadline. After the deadline, he will forward me all received forecasts. His FB account is fb.com/usiek ; his VK account is vk.com/id226026008

I will publish all forecasts soon after the deadline.

Please join this competition to make it more interesting, and have fun making your forecast

Long story short, you can just send your forecast to Usiek telling him how many points you think each GAT participant will earn. Just manage to do that before the actual start of the GAT. As simple as that. Good luck

Here are all forecasts in the forecast competition for the Gomoku A-Tournament (GAT) 2019! Click on the image to properly see it.

Usiek, a co-organizer of this forecast competition, also prepared a very nice Excel file in which you can insert the actual results of the GAT and instantly see the sum of deviations for each participant of this forecast competition. The file also provides the average predicted score for each GAT player. You can download the file from: https://sites.google.com/site/sghgfwie/home/gat2019.xlsx

Let's see who will prove to be the best expert and win a nice wooden gomoku board

The Gomoku A-Tournament (GAT) started two days ago, and I beg my pardon for not having had enough time to do my duty on time. My duty was to write an article criticizing every GAT participant for his weaknesses and wishing every GAT participant no fluff and no feather, just as I did for the GQT participants in a previous article of mine (http://renjunews.com/no-f...qt-participants). Such a ritual, as explained in that article, is based on an old good Russian tradition and is intended to help players by reminding them about their weaknesses and motivating them. Following that article, quite a few players, including some GAT participants, asked me to do the same thing for the GAT players.

Better late than never, so I am writing such an article now.

The article is strictly about weaknesses, so praises and mentions of strengths are deliberately avoided. Praises are reserved for a future article, which I will write after the world championship. In that future article I will praise players based on their performance in this GAT.

That's the way - criticize before an important event and praise thereafter.

And I have no hesitation as to who to start with: Zoltán László, who seems to consider himself to be the best, but let his national team down in the last world team championship, where he was only third among the players who played at the first board, and was unable to win even the national championship title, losing the famous Hungarian Meijin match played in March 2018.

Let us have a closer look at Zoltán's performance in the last world team championship. He was the captain of the Hungarian team and should have led it by example in an inspirational way, similar to how Denis Osipov led the Russian team to winning the gold, and what did Zoltán actually do? Already in Round 2 he blundered and lost to Oleg Bulatovsky (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14520), and this must have impacted the morale of the entire team. In the match against Czechia A, Zoltán lost to Martin Muzika basically in a few moves (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14615). And in the decisive match against Russia A, Zoltán missed a VCT and thereby lost a precious half-point (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14649). The loss of that half-point would have left the Hungarian team without any medals at all if Márk Horváth had not sensationally earned a half-point against Mikhail Kozhin in the same match. That was a miracle by Márk, as his rating never exceeded 1566, whilst Mikhail had twice won the bronze of the world championship and was 200+ rating points above Márk at the start of the game.

Half a year before that team championship, Zoltán played the Hungarian Meijin match and lost 2-3 after leading 2-0 (http://gomokuworld.com/site/tournaments/219), which raises questions about Zoltán's qualities as a fighter.

During that match, Dmitry Epifanov, who is a famous Russian renju trainer and is now playing in the Renju A-Tournament, publicly commented (as translated by me from Russian), "And Zoltán is being lazy at the board, not working hard. Moves playable in one-minutes games are not so good for a long time control." Roman Berezin, a famous Russian renju player, voiced the same opinion.

To summarize all of the above, Zoltán appears to be a player whose overconfidence often leads to careless play. He seems to not always work hard at the board, possibly lacking the ability to motivate himself to do his best and utmost in games he thinks he will most likely win anyway. His quick loss due to a blunder against Pavel Laube in the GAT 2017 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/191/12670) and a quick loss to Jan Purkrabek in the Hungarian championship 2017 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/185/11958) only complete that picture.

Gergő Tóth is another Hungarian and has his own weaknesses. First, he is focused on gradually building a win and sometimes misses more direct opportunities to win the game. Here are a couple of examples: he missed a VCF on move 49 in his game against Zoltán László in the Hungarian Autumn Tournament 2017 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/206/13264) and missed a simple VCT on move 51 in the game against the same player in the Polish championship 2018 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/217/14452). Second, Gergő's play itself might not be of the highest quality, as he got outplayed by Denis Osipov both in the GAT 2017 and in the world team championship 2018 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/191/12671, http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14650), although Gergő won one of these two games as a result Denis' blunder made in a position in which Denis had a simple win. In an interview taken by me from Gergő in April 2018, he said, "Sometimes I succeed, but mostly I am lame and not so creative." Third, Gergő seems to be a very busy man who does not have much time for gomoku, and his shape varies depending on factors known only to him. His performance in the Czech Open 2019, in which he lost both to Laube and Tesařík, was not commensurate with Gergő's rating and illustrates the point.

Márk Horváth is the third Hungarian in this GAT, and his rating never exceeded 1566 despite that he played 50+ games. Nuff said.

I will only add that Márk proved to be unable to handle girls. For example, he built a massive advantage in his game against Pavlína Brdková in the last world team championship and had a bunch of wins in that game, but totally messed up, even missing a two-moves-long VCF on move 67, and achieved only a draw (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/218/14594). Márk also started the Hungarian Autumn Tournament 2018 with a loss to Andrea Nagy (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/235/14852), a female amateur who had a provisional rating of 1340 and had played only 8 games before. In May 2017 Márk challenged me to a duel on Kurnik, which consisted of one 20 min game, and had a VCT in that game, but needlessly played a four like a newbie and lost the game to me as a result. Being unable to handle girls is a clear sign of weakness, because girls tend to be much less motivated to achieve highest results in gomoku than guys are.

Concerning Ilya Muratov, I have heard an opinion of a strong player that for some unknown reasons Ilya plays much weaker in international tournaments than in domestic ones. In particular, he played in the GAT 2013 and the GAT 2017 and finished there last and last but one, respectively, but won the Russian championship more times than anyone else. He was put on the third board in the last world team championship, and this apparently reflects what his teammates thought about his abilities to fight world-class players in international tournaments.

What could be the reasons be? Ilya positions himself as an unofficial leader of the Russian gomoku world, so it may be important for him to be the best in Russia, whilst he may subconsciously care less about international tournaments, especially when he does not see a realistic chance of winning the gold or at least a medal. Another possible reason could be related to his playing style. Ilya is a positional player, whilst Russian players tend to be more focused on gaining the initiative, so Ilya may have found an optimal style to beat them, but may find it hard to create much trouble to Europeans by playing in the same style. To put it simply, Ilya may have adapted to play specifically against Russian players. Also, Ilya seems to be regarded as a player who is very stable and accurate against average players, whilst successfully fighting world-class players requires something more than mere accuracy.

Alexey Lebedev is a typical average Russian player and occupied a national seat thanks to peculiarities of the organization of the Russian championship. The Russian championship is ignored by many Russian players and has a very complicated qualification system that consists of a series of qualification tournaments and gives advantage to those players who can frequently travel or live in cities where tournaments are organized. Many strong Russian players who are above Alexey on the rating list did not participate in the Russian final (e.g., Kachaev, Karasev, Kozhin, Tarannikov, and Litvinenko). Alexey won the second place in the Russian final, finishing a half-point above the players who took the third and fourth places. He is the 14th Russian on the world rating list. In a conversation with me, a strong player characterized Alexey as an average player who has nothing special in his game and does not calculate far. In the GAT 2015 Alexey took the last place.

Ilya Katsev occupied a national seat by exploiting the Russian qualification system, which was designed largely by himself. The regulations were such that the winner of the Cup of Russia, which was to be held in Saint-Petersburg, would get a national place in the GAT. Many strong Russian players elected not to travel to Saint-Petersburg and thus did not play in the Cup of Russia (e.g., Muratov, Rizvanov, Karasev, Litvinenko, Tarannikov), so the only tournament participant with a rating above 1700 was Denis Kachaev. As an inhabitant of Saint-Petersburg, Ilya enjoyed the convenience of not having to travel. And he won the tournament simply by beating Denis in the direct encounter and avoiding messing up in the other rounds (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/247/15250). The overall score between Denis and Ilya before the tournament was 21.5-1.5 in favor of Denis, who is also above Ilya by about 250 rating points, but everything can happen in a single game. Denis won all other games in that tournament, but finished below Ilya because of a worse Berger coefficient.

Ilya Muratov and Ilya Katsev never earned a national place for Russia themselves, but occupied in 2017 and 2019 national Russian places, which had been earned for Russia by others. This is a result of internal Russian regulations designed largely by Ilya Katsev and Ilya Muratov themselves.

Speaking about specific weaknesses of Ilya Katsev as a player, I can say that I was told that his main weakness is his inability to really focus in a game. In other words, Ilya is always somewhat relaxed in his games.

Moreover, Ilya Katsev's approach to gomoku seems to be somewhat simplistic. He apparently tends to think in terms of learned variants and reducing positions to known ones. For instance, he often adds two stones in such a way so as to convert the opening to a position similar to a position known to him. This seems to reflect Ilya's nature as a mathematician. Mathematicians are used to reducing a problem to a solved one.

On top of that, Ilya is an unstable player and sometimes miserably fails in an inexplicable manner. An example is his game against Soňa Turečková in the last Czech Open (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/246/15361). Ilya is about 400 ratings points above her, but managed to achieve only a draw, avoiding a defeat by the skin of his teeth. Soňa had a two-moves-long VCT on move 37 and a one-move-long VCF on move 51, but missed them both. Another example is the Cup of Russia 2018, where Ilya lost to everyone except for players rated below 1300 (http://gomokuworld.com/site/tournaments/222).

In the GAT 2017 Ilya finished last. After the tournament, he made a public post in which he said (as translated by me from Russian), "I earned as many points as I deserved by my play."

Oleg Bulatovsky is on the 29th position on the rating list and made it to the GAT thanks to his Swiss gambit in the GQT. He seems to have stopped to progress long ago, with his highest rating dating back to 2014, and, like Ilya Katsev, is an unstable player. For example, Oleg utterly failed in the Polish championship 2018, where he finished 15th out of 18 participants (http://gomokuworld.com/site/tournaments/217). He likes to put his favorite openings, and at least once he was caught in a trap made of two stones added to his opening (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/185/11942).

Martin Höbemägi is primarily a renju player, and his renju habits may serve him not well in decisive moments. He performed pretty poorly in the last world team gomoku championship, earning only 4 points in 9 rounds. Failing to qualify to the Renju A-Tournament from the Renju Qualification Tournament, he occupied the Estonian national place in the GAT.

Maxim Karasev, Martin Muzika, těpán Tesařík, and Michał Żukowski have already been criticized in my article about the GQT participants.

That's it, guys. It seems I have not forgotten anyone. To complete the ritual, I wish you no fluff and no feather in the remaining rounds of the GAT

I am publishing the current standing in the forecast competition for the GAT! The table below shows the sum of deviations for each forecaster under the assumption that each GAT player will have the same efficiency as he showed in the first six rounds.

As you can see, the forecast competition is currently dominated by Czechs. All five Czech participants are currently in the top 8. It looks like the Czechs are real experts. I am amazed by how they are performing in this forecast competition. And the current leader is Pavel Laube, an extremely experienced gomoku player and apparently a wise expert

No drastic changes in the table are expected to occur by the end of the tournament, although any forecaster may well go a few positions up or down. It is like the voting in the Eurovision Song Context: after a half of countries voted, you more or less know the global picture, and the voting by the remaining half of countries will merely introduce some minor changes.

Let's see who will win the board and the title of best expert Laube is the most probable winner, but he may get overtaken by Nipoti, Topkin, Soucek, Malowieski, or Fnukal. Stay tuned